Re: [Inkscape-devel] New tiling interface proposal
Thanks for the link! - The Frieze groups are definitely interesting! I'll add those to the current mock-ups once I have the time. They should help make border designs easier. - The Rosetta groups seem to be just Simple Rotations and Symmetry + Rotations though. Am I missing something?
I'm not sure what you mean by rotation points, reflection lines etc. that can be moved though. They don't exist as separate points, they're just the borders and corners of the guides. A guide defines the shape of the base tile. You modify the guide itself, not points along the guide. (example: simple translation has a rectangle guide. You can easily change the dimensions of this rectangle, though it will stay a rectangle).
Are you referring to my notion of guide points? Guide points are separate points that when added to one side of a guide, create counterparts on other relevant sides of the guide, so you know where you add lines in a way to create seamless transitions from one tile to the next. They're made so that a user would need 0 knowledge of wallpaper geometry when creating seamless tiles: they just need to connect to the guide points.
I should have made a visual reference of guides and guide point behavior for each tiling type, but the truth is, I'm pretty confused about tiling behaviour myself. :S That's the whole reason I tried to come up with an interface that basically requires 0 prior knowledge. x) ------------------------------
Message: 6 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 11:55:16 -0700 (PDT) From: veronika <vmi@...2827...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] New tiling interface proposal To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <1332010516483-4628619.post@...2730...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
You have covered the topic very well. Another example to look at is the Kali applet:
http://www.scienceu.com/geometry/handson/kali/index.cgi?group=wt
For Tiling along the Path you could support the seven Frieze groups and for Rotational tiling you could support the Rosette groups.
In the guides for a given symmetry group, you could show the rotation points (along with their degree) as well as reflection lines, glide reflection lines and translation directions and lengths. I think you briefly describe these ideas in your document but since there is quite a lot going on here it may be useful to spell it out in detail for each symmetry group. The user should be able to move these guide lines and points as long as they stay within the constraints of the chosen symmetry group.
Below is a picture of guides for symmetry p6m (colours just used for visibility but should conform to guidelines elsewhere):
http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/file/n4628619/wallpaper.png
The book "The Symmetry of Things" by Conway, Burgiel and Goodman-Straus has some very nice visualizations for reference.
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Message: 7 Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 21:03:47 +0100 From: Stefan de Konink <stefan@...2063...> Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Inkscape GIS To: brylie@...2823..., Inkscape Devel List inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Message-ID: <4F64EE23.3050006@...2063...> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
On 17-03-12 20:55, Brylie Oxley wrote:
Thank you for suggesting Mapnik Stefan! :-) Inkscape would be a suitable GUI for a Mapnik based cartography solution. I do not think that Inkscape and Mapnik are necessarily in opposition, do you?
The major problem is, if you look at cartography to SVG is that data is not offered in layers you would actually use in regular print. The output of mapnik is actually a set of drawing commands. So your audience might require two approaches;
- ability to get an arbitary piece of a map, and the ability to interactively edit the stylesheet, see output etc. Inkscape could help here because stylesheets contain a lot of SVG elements you want to edit along the map; the result of this operation is a stylesheet, and a set of icons.
- the ability to get arbitrary data in layers and be your own renderer, stack layers, assign decimation, add colours etc. this would be closer to having a shapefile in a solution like Illustrator and modifying it. Opposed to mapnik this step requires the editor to do 'layer' operations theirselves.
Stefan
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Hi Valerie,
Yes, the Rosetta group has two basic patterns: simple rotations (restricted to angles that evenly divide into 360) and rotation plus reflection - I didn't see the reflection option in your design, perhaps I missed it.
I have been thinking about how the properties of a symmetry group can be visually represented so that the user can understand what is going on (without studying Group Theory or cracking open a textbook on Symmetry). Below are three examples where I have tried using annotations in the diagram to represent how the wallpaper group symmetry will be applied to the base tile:
http://inkscape.13.n6.nabble.com/file/n4631649/3xsym.png
The types of actions performed on the base tile depend on the wallpaper group (of course). Sometimes at the intersection of the base tile lines you have a rotation. Sometimes along a line you have reflection or you may have a glide reflection (reflection plus translation). So I was thinking that in addition to having lines which define the size, position and orientation of the base tile, the guides could provide information about what will happen along a line or at a corner. In the diagram above I have used little propellers to show that a rotation will occur at a corner as well as a dashed lines to show the edges that define the rotation angle. I have used a little barbell symbol and a dash-dot-dash line to indicate an edge along which a reflection will occur. I am still thinking how best to represent a glide - I will have to get back to you on that one.
In some cases, the user will want to flip the guides (vertically, horizontally) in order to align with the directions of the wallpaper actions with the directions of their design. I don't have an example of this in my diagram but it could occur for example with 4*2 (also known as p4g).
Are your guide points a type of marker to show the user where a given point will appear (with orientation) under the tiling operation? Can the user change the markers in any way or are they for information only?
Seeing a shadow of the operations (see the second column of the diagram above) could also be very useful at design time - it gives nice feedback about how a design behaves at the edges without having to generate the entire tiling. If the shadow is limited to one example of each operation it may not place too high a demand on performance.
I am no expert on Symmetry Group Theory but I am very interested in learning more about it and understanding and teaching Symmetry concepts to non-Math people and students just getting started in Math.
Cheers, Veronika
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